It turns out the Xuanyuan Empire was run on Bug Breeding. The notes showed that for new Gu, the mark of success was focused around the two main purposes of Gu. If they retained the ability to share cultivation and develop laws by consuming Natural Treasures, then they were a success and could be considered a new type of Gu. If it lost either of those abilities then it was not a Gu and would be disposed of. After so many years, there were thousands of different types of Gu, all with their own niche in the system and their own pros or cons.

Since ‘talent’, the perception of Qi as Sage had discovered so long ago, was not important here, then it meant anyone could become a Cultivator. Instead, money was the determining factor here. Cultivators in the first rank were far more numerous here than in the Tianxia Empire, but the upper tiers were just as low in population, if not more so. With so many people competing over a limited number of resources only the richest could advance. Every level was an exponential climb. The common people could save up and afford to buy a cheap Gu, and raising them to the first rank was similar to having an additional child. After that, the costs rose rapidly. Most people used Gu of the first rank to facilitate their profession, and the majority of Gu were actually created to fill these niches.

Blastids were developed around the unique energy port bodily feature, which allowed the beasts at the first and second tier to release elemental attacks from their body. Normally, those in the first rank could only manipulate Qi within their own bodies, while those at the second rank controlled Qi like an aura, with a limited range they could extend it outwards. Only by the third rank could they finally detach it from their body to create true ranged attacks. The first and second rank blastids filled that hole while also giving mortals access to such amenities as long as they could keep the bug fed.

Things in the Xuanyuan Empire were quite different at the low level, which meant their value for ‘mortals’ was drastically different. Anyone with money to buy and keep a Blastid fed would probably buy a Gu instead, making themselves stronger, live longer, and give them a marketable ability they could use to support themselves. Sage realized that the Die Clan would not be using them as he’d imagined and were more interested in the energy ports and how they could be combined with different Gu. Of course, they’d probably also use the high tier Blastids as auxiliary weapons, just as the Lang Clan had been doing. The super rich could afford to not just raise their own cultivation, but raise these weapons that could conceivably provide a whole second pool of Qi to use for attacking.

Against someone without a Blastid you could use your Qi Pool on defense or evasion, and use the Blastid to attack, while the opponent had to do all three. A sufficiently strong Blastid would help to win any fight of attrition. To make it worse, you could also raise a tier five Blastid for much less than a Core Gu and have an attack beyond your level. This would be more concerning if the trend didn’t stop at tier five. Raising a tier six Blastid required having more than a thousand tier fives, which made them more expensive than a Soul Gu. A fact which would probably greatly annoy the Die Clan as soon as Sage was done here gathering information. The original part of the agreement had been maintained, that he would pass over the method for tier 6 Blastids after he was done with the history books. It was to ensure he got all the answers he was looking for and not just random books.

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Since he’d found everything he was looking for, there were only a few more things he was curious about and after asking one of the assistants, he was given the book he needed to find the answer. The question being: Was a full merge with a Gu useful?

Sage was far from the first to come up with this idea. Once the Gu Cultivation system matured, the True Insect Immortal Index was buried deep. The true Merge was always a forbidden technique, but Mutate and Mature were still integral to raising Gu and portions of them could still be found in other Gu raising techniques that had spread through the empire. The techniques to link to Gu were far simpler, mainly relying upon forming a symbiotic relationship with Gu instead of controlling its mind. Merging the body completely with a Gu was not compatible with Gu Cultivation and making it into the Core and later Soul Gu. It was like trying to combine the Gu together, with one as the cultivation for the other. When taking into account the physical and mental side effects of the true Merge, it was no wonder that Gu Cultivation became the mainstream.

Even if it was effective, the Die Clan had records from ancient times speaking of its problems. The number of mergers and careful selection of beasts could be controlled to prevent mental issues, but even the physical changes on their own were enough to cause issues. Not to the individuals, but to society. People were always eager to divide themselves into groups, finding a place for themselves to belong. In the process they also quite often found those unlike themselves and animosity would form. Such obvious physical differences made it easier to form groups or discriminate against them. There were also notes that this could be alleviated when everyone was vastly different from each other, but nothing was guaranteed. Some communities split into multiple groups and lived harmoniously, others were filled with completely unique people, yet still they found other reasons to destroy each other. Yet, they found that having beast and bug body parts made the rate of such discrimination higher than when everyone was normal humans. Since it took extra effort to manage the mergers and also came with such a societal detriment, the true Merge was forbidden.

What was interesting about this book was that it didn’t mention the Die Clan in specific. It spoke of ‘The Clan’ when referring to these historical events and conclusions. This strangely open ended statement made Sage wonder if this book was a remnant from whatever group the Die and Lang Clan had descended from. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think that the Lang was the origin of the Die Clan. While it turned out that the Lang Clan founded the Chong Clan, before they later revolted and took over, the Die were not part of that story.

While Sage hadn’t come to the library to steal their techniques or the secrets of their best Gu, that didn’t mean he would pass on some free knowledge. After learning the important answers, he also had the assistant bring him every book he was allowed to read. He rapidly flipped through them, looking like he’d barely taken a glance, but was actually copying them to Memory Spheres on the Inner World. Combined with the knowledge that had been collected from the bookstores and other brokers, they formed a pretty decent database of the Xuanyuan Empire, or at least this Azure Sky Kingdom he was in.

Once he’d gone through all the books, he handed over the Jade Tablet with the information about the tier 6 Blastids and took his leave. He’d already told them where the Lang Clan was located, as well as where he was staying, but he wasn’t going to spend more than ten thousand Spirit Stones on a Messaging Jade to keep in touch. He didn’t personally know any of them and he wasn’t going to be returning to the Lang Clan for a long time.

Leaving the Die Clan, he stopped by a few of the Gu shops to compare them to those where Bear Three lived. After buying a few more Gu and some materials related to their growth he returned back to Stormport City.